


Persephone, Redux

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocafic, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:50:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The return of the beloved/does not correct/the loss of the beloved.</i> (From Louise Gluck's "Persephone the Wanderer."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persephone, Redux

The sun is setting on the equinox, gilding the cottonwoods across the road and lighting the maple to a spire of flames, when Sam returns.

 

Dean waits, feet on the railing, bentwood tipped back against the wall, cane propped against the table, on which there are two bottles of beer, barely sweating in the cool autumn air.

 

He waits as Sam’s familiar tread fills his ears and sets up a steady rhythm in his ribcage, waits until he can read in the lines of his brother’s face what this year’s trip has brought him.

 

Waits as Sam takes a last long stride, bootfall like a war drum, heavy on the tread of the bottom step.

 

Dean drops his feet like it doesn’t cost him in pain, wraps his hand around the cane handle, rises slow and in stages, until he can greet his brother standing upright.

 

Sam’s arms steady him as he sways, and he’s warm for the first time in days with the furnace of his brother’s chest and the beat of Sam’s big heart against his body.

 

Anyone looking would know they were lovers, and it still thrills Dean, even after all these years, to think that someone might see them and know that they are brothers, too.

 

They’re beyond being judged, have earned the freedom of their love by the sacrifice of Sam’s life at the altar of necessity and under the command of indifferent angels.

 

“God, I missed you,” Sam breathes against Dean’s temple, following his words with the brush of lips trailing down to Dean’s, which he offers with his own words of longing, hidden against his brother’s mouth and spoken with his brother’s tongue already tasting the words.

 

When they at last break away, breath ragged, Dean says, “Come inside,” and Sam shudders, shaking them both, and nods brokenly, brush of his cheek against Dean’s hair chasing shivers down Dean’s spine.

 

Beer forgotten, Dean takes Sam’s hand and leads him into their home, which Sam had last seen in the new green light of spring’s first morning.

 

As always, they kick off their boots in the front hall, strip out of their socks so they can pad barefoot through the house. Even this simple act, familiar and unforgotten on his long, long time away, tightens Sam’s breath with wanting.

 

As they pass the kitchen, Sam sees that the table is laid for supper, smells the air rich with bread and baked pumpkin and the applewood that burns merrily in the big hearth.

 

They do not stop to eat. 

 

Through the living room with its worn braided rug, down the hall with the scuffed runner, Sam’s toes ride the shadow of Dean’s heels until they come to the bedroom with the high, old bed and the faded crazy quilt.

 

It’s chilly here, but when Sam shivers a second time, it’s not for the cold.  Dean has turned to look at him, leaving nothing out of his eyes as they trail from Sam’s hair—shaggy now and wild, but still sleek and brown, untouched by grey—to his throat, apple bobbing as he swallows away the urge to say something that might break Dean’s gaze from its travel.

Across his broad, strong shoulders, down the taper of his waist, like a caress at his navel where the core of him coils, waiting for release.

 

Lower still, lingering on the evidence of his arousal, until Sam wants to moan or scream, beg Dean to just this once leave off his inventory and let him strip Dean bare right then.

 

At last Dean’s gaze finds Sam’s powerful thighs, the straight strength of his shins, the impossible fragility of his feet and then returns to Sam’s face, where his smile matches Dean’s:  joy to joy, heat to heat.

 

They undress in silence but for their speaking looks, and then they stand again, an arm’s length apart, and stare, spending precious moments to catalogue one another—the unfamiliar scars, shadows of hunger, new marks and old memories, mementos of their life together and apart.

 

At last, Dean says, “Okay?” And Sam hears in it all the questions Dean will never ask about the way he has aged, about what nature has done to betray him in the time Sam’s been away. 

 

Sam answers with his hands on Dean’s face, lips to the new lines around Dean’s eyes, to the looser skin at his throat, to the signs of time stripping away the strength from his limbs, leaving him sinewy and somehow tougher for it. 

 

Sam answers on his knees, mouth gentling Dean to fullness, tongue tasting at last the one thing the world’s beauty can never offer, the only thing that really sates him.

 

Sam answers with a finger trailing wetly from his own mouth to Dean’s most secret place and with his palm, too, weighing his brother’s heavy need.

 

“Sam,” Dean says in an urgent whisper, hands tightening in Sam’s hair to bring him to his feet.

 

Sam surges upward, steps Dean backward to the bed, one hand on his brother’s hip to steady him as he climbs up and Sam follows, kneeling over Dean to take in the sight of his brother, the flush of heat spreading across his chest; the jut of his cock, hard and wanting; the way his thighs tremble with need.

 

“Sam,” Dean whispers again, this time something imploring in it, and the last dam of Sam’s reserve, built by leavetaking and long journeys, breaks apart, driving Sam to drop against Dean, his hand between them to wrap around them both, tugging roughly, teeth clenched against coming, wanting to draw it out and knowing that he can’t, not with Dean cursing and writhing under him, pinned at the place where Sam holds them together and takes them apart.

 

Sam comes first, shouting, and Dean follows, their mingled seed painting Dean’s belly and filling the air with a ripe scent that makes his throat tight—with laughter for his having it again or tears that he can’t keep it, Sam tries not to consider.

 

Dean lays his hands flat to Sam’s chest, bringing Sam back to his brother.  Looking into Dean’s face, Sam  sees there all the eternity he could ever want, written in a secret language only he can read.

 

The second time is slower, Sam sliding into Dean with a loud, long exhale, wishing he could never breathe again if only they could stay just so, locked together, Sam falling into his brother, Dean catching him in the cradle of his thighs. 

 

Dean shivers beneath him, pleads in broken words, and his hands urge Sam to thrust until they’re rocking in a beloved rhythm, slow but stronger, the bed shifting in the places they’ve worn in the floorboards, headboard tapping out a counterpoint against the pine wall.

 

Dean arches and chokes on a shout, throws his head back, muscles of his neck corded as he comes, and the sight of him drives Sam in deep, spilling, Dean clenching around him, impossibly tight, and for a suspended moment Sam is sure he’s dying, his heart tearing free of its moorings to fling itself against the cage of his ribs.

 

He collapses at Dean’s side, arm thrown over Dean’s heaving chest, and can’t move or see, can’t take a deep breath without hitching against something painful in his throat.

 

“Stay,” Dean says, though he knows his brother can’t.  Sam has only the time the angels gave him when he bargained for his brother’s life, the life of the world a secondary consideration, then as now.

 

“I will,” Sam lies, like he does every year.

 

Later, supper eaten, dying fire the only sound in the darkening room, Dean watches Sam trace the thin skin of his wrist, finger ghosting over the delicate blue line of Dean’s life beating out its finite time.

 

“When I’m gone—“ He starts, perennially.  Sam’s hand clenches him hard, until Dean can feel the bones of his wrist grinding in his brother’s grip.

 

At last, Sam’s grasp eases, and Dean nods like they’ve settled something, though really nothing has changed.

 

He’ll sit on the porch come March, boots on the railing, watching as sunrise paints cold silver lines on the budding limbs of the cottonwoods across the road and makes embers of the red buds of the maple in the front yard.

 

He’ll watch Sam walk away, following him with his eyes until he’s out of sight and the crunch of his bootsteps on the gravel is no more than a memory lost in the morning sounds of returning birds.

 

He’ll wonder, as he does now every year, if he’ll see Sam again.  Every year, he’s colder come September.  Every year he’s older, too.

 

Now, though, with Sam sitting beside him in their kitchen, with the hearth warm and their harvest in, Dean thinks he can wait a little longer—maybe forever—for just this:  darkness falling on an autumn evening, Sam’s eyes the brightest light in the room, and all the fierce destruction of winter held at bay by his brother’s broad back.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the autumnal equinox, which is intimately associated in pagan memory with cycles of life, death, and rebirth. There are many ways you can consider the coming of winter. Here, I've mingled two.


End file.
